


Styx

by lyf (alliaria)



Series: Mechtober 2020 [3]
Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Bad Puns, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Gen, Mechtober, Very Very Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:19:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26982754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alliaria/pseuds/lyf
Summary: In which Drumbot Brian is bad at both living and dying.
Series: Mechtober 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1953469
Comments: 5
Kudos: 32





	Styx

Brian is notoriously bad at staying alive. It’s doesn’t really matter when you’re immortal, doesn’t even hurt that much, but it’s  _ annoying _ . So the fourth time he wakes pressed into the mud of the battlefield, he lies there for a minute, staring up at the smoke-streaked sky as bullets slam into the ground around him. A Rose Red finds him anyway, driving a serrated knife into his chest. He doesn’t even have time to comment on the unusual choice of weaponry before his heart stops beating. What a shame.

The fifth time around, he’s hanging over the front edge of a quickly collapsing trench, well on his way to sliding in. He drags himself to his feet unsteadily, pulling the blade from his chest with a slick, wet noise. Brian grimaces at the feeling and stabs a Rose Red through the throat, kicking the body away as it collapses.

“I suppose I really  _ stabbed _ her attention,” he says, and a young boy crouched in the trench at his feet stares at him in a mixture of terror and awe. “I ended her  _ knife? _ It’s a pun on life.”

“I just saw you  _ die,” _ the kid manages to stutter out.

“Did you now?” he asks absently, and reels backward as a cloud of shrapnel flies into Brian’s head, splitting the panels of his neck open. The kid screams and ducks down, disappearing behind the mud walls. “Yeah, it really wasn’t that funny,” he grumbles before a tank explodes and he is flattened under a heavy metal panel.

The Toy Soldier wakes him this time, though probably not on purpose. The bayonet of its rifle crushes his left shoulder, pinning him to the ground as he struggles awake.

“Ah,  _ Brian!” _ it exclaims, wrenching the bayonet out and bending the metal panels further out of shape. “Awfully sorry, old chap! ‘Tis a lovely day out, I didn’t realize you were wallowing in the dirt!”

“Urgh...tank,” he mutters dully because there is mud in his eyes and in every crevice of his joints and maybe even sloshing around inside his body, so no, he’s not having a  _ lovely _ day.

“Oh, the one your lifeless body was crushed under when we found you? Ashes had me pull you out! Really exceedingly kind of them, you should thank them some time!” It beams at him before General White shouts an order and it clambers stiffly out of the trench, leaving him to face whatever Ashes has planned for him alone.

They make no effort to help him up as he staggers to his feet, the mud sloughing off his body in thick sheets. He shakes the remaining dirt off as vigorously as he can, only to be disappointed when not even a single speck lands on them. A few passing partisans shoot him dirty (because, you know, dirt) looks as a few drops splatter their already filthy uniforms.

“You owe me fifty dollars,” Ashes says, lighting a cigarette that miraculously doesn’t go out immediately in the pouring rain.

He doesn’t recall borrowing money from them recently, but they wouldn’t  _ lie _ to him. Probably. “You need fifty dollars now?  _ In the middle of a battle?” _

“And what about it?” They raise one eyebrow expectantly, and Brian sighs and pulls out his wallet, counting out five silver pieces, because Cole is a huge wanker who only uses silver for the royal aesthetic. “Nope,” they say. “Not King’s pieces. Fifty  _ Astorjian _ dollars.”

“Fuck,” he says, because Astorjia was seven systems ago and technically, the Astorjian dollar wouldn’t even begin circulating until seventy-four years in the future. “I need to, uh, go fight. For the revolution.”

“Brian,” Ashes says disapprovingly, in the way that means they know exactly what’s happening here. “You do still  _ have _ Astorjian dollars, right?”

“It was nice talking to you, Ashes.” He climbs out of the trench as quickly as he can, ignoring Ashes as they listed off whatever his debts would entail this time, and immediately takes eight shots to the chest.

When he wakes up this time, the trench has caved in and he is tired in that bone-deep way that never resets with each death. If he even has bones. Dr. Carmilla really fucked up his body the first time he died, and he never bothered to ask Raphaella about what was still there. Dying isn’t so bad, he tells himself again. It gets easier, except for when it doesn’t. Except for when the feeling of warmth seeping out of his heart feels too much like freezing to death in the vastness of space, utterly alone. There’s something ironic there, that he spent so much of his life bringing others back from the dead, only to resent Dr. Carmilla for it. Then again, he didn’t give  _ his  _ patients a fucking mortality switch.

It’s probably easier for the others. Tim, constantly throwing himself into battle. Jonny, abusing his immortality to win bets and scare small children. Or maybe it doesn’t, maybe it’s always exactly the same as the first time, and they do it anyway. Maybe a single final, death would be better than this, to just float in the endless void of space forevermore, but they are all notoriously bad at staying dead.

**Author's Note:**

> For @mechsnismszine on tumblr's Mechtober Prompts, Day 10-12: vampires/death
> 
> Achilles and Brian parallels! Brian is "the hanged man" tarot card, commonly depicted as hanging from one foot. Who was held by one foot (heel, more specifically)? Achilles! Brian has one living, non-mechanized (non-immortal) part of him!! So does Achilles! Also, parallels between the Styx and the cold of space (not really) immortalizing them?
> 
> No idea how Brian's death mechanic works, but headcanon that he can only be killed through his brain and flesh part. Also don't know if his metal just pops back into shape? Okay, when I type it out it makes less sense but I swear it did in my mind.


End file.
